I had been BUSY, these last few weeks or months, if you may.
For those of you who don't know, I was off to the United States for some Official work for about 6 weeks. Further more, I visited HOME, for a couple weeks on my return, making me EMOTIONALLY FULL and PHYSICALLY depleted. Giving all the above excuses, what I am sadly trying to admit is that I haven't been able to blog regularly, since my weekends, had been really hectic. But life is back to normal (at least as of now), so I will be trying to get back to my schedule of blogging once-a-week. :-)
To all my readers, Sorry to Keep you waiting, and now, getting down to Business. :-)
Cast: Tony Leung, Zhang Fengyi, Chang Chen, Chi-Ling Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Hu Jun
Director: John Woo
Overall Rating: 7.0/10.0 (A good movie to watch)
Before I start this review, there is a Disclaimer about this movie.
Since this is an actual movie of almost 5 hour length, which is compressed into 2.5 hours for English audiences, there are notable areas where movie’s story suddenly seems to go off-the-track. Also, a 50% reduction in the show-time cannot be loss-less and hence there are some things, which happen unexplained in the movie, and the audience is supposed to use its-own-imagination to understand the context.
The Storyline:
The movie is set in ancient China, where there are seemingly 3 kingdoms, one on the North and the other two are relatively on the Southern-side. The Northern empire became stronger and the ambitious Prime-minister named “Cao Cao”, made the “puppet” emperor to allow a full-fledged attack on the Southern warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan, by calling them Rebels, who were traitors to the empire.
This is followed by a series of battles, first between the armies of Cao Cao with Liu Bei, where the completely outnumbered soldiers in Liu Bei’s side try to fight as long as they can to ensure the peasants and the common men can escape the wrath of Cao Cao, before they are defeated. In this process, the most notable thing that happens is that General Zhao Yun saves the life of the infant, who is the heir to the throne of Liu Bei while fighting in the battle and towards the end of this battle, when he is cornered and running, Cao Cao admires the loyalty the great Generals have towards Liu Bei.
This loss results in a fleeing Liu Bei’s Viceroy to go and convince Sun Quan to formulate an alliance with them, even when Liu Bei’s armies are much smaller, and just defeated. The alliance is a success when Zhou Yu, the most trusted Advisor and Viceroy of Sun Quan gets convinced that war is inevitable, and only joining forces do they have a chance to protect themselves from the threat of being run-over by Cao Cao’s army.
The story now becomes interesting as the Cao Cao makes plans for his attacks in various formulations, whereas Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang, (the strategists from Liu Bei and Sun Quan), try to reverse engineer Cao Cao’s attacking strategies and try to defend their stands. What is more beautiful to see is the sentiment that Cao Cao harbors, that though he has the strength of armies in numbers, they are all soldiers, who were imprisoned from previous wars, and hence, their loyalties were shacky, whereas though the opposition had fewer soldiers and notably some great war-heroes, they were all loyal to their respective leaders.
The alliance of Liu Bei and Sun Quan, brings a consensus amongst armies, one which is well trained and in high morale, and the other having strong and inspirational leaders, thus making their combination a force to reckon with. The action sequences, atleast the picturization of the armies and the scenic beauty are a pure spectacle to look out for in the movie. However, it is the whole chess-like battle planning and strategizing that awes the audience the most and leave them yearning for more.
Final Verdict:
It is a good war-movie, but the cuts probably took off some of the storyline with it, jerking the audience out-of-sync with the storyline and making the movie difficult-to-comprehend. On a personal note, it made me nostalgic a lot, about “Age-of-Empires”, as I saw similar visuals, same type of infantry and cavalry units, coupled with the siege weapons and even the navy.
On the whole, I walked out of the theatre, pondering, “Damn! That is some war-time strategizing, and some really awesome military formations, but was there anything more in the story except the war?”
If you ask me, “Should I watch it?”, all I can say is,
The action sequences and the cinematography are absolutely awesome. If it helps to know, this is the most expensive movie in Asia-Pacific region till date. However, the real answer depends on whether you would like to see a few hundred thousand men, fighting with medieval weaponry in a historic backdrop and/or if you love “Age-of-empires”, watch it to remember the “good-times”.
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